Microsoft, Apple Both Targeted in Patent Lawsuit

Reuters reports that Israeli technology group, Emblaze, have accused Microsoft and Apple of infringing its U.S. patent for media streaming technology.

On Wednesday, Emblaze, which owns Magic Software and Matrix IT, announced that Microsoft's IIS Smooth Streaming system and Apple's HTTP Live Streaming Application infringed upon one of its patents. Emblaze said it notified Apple and Microsoft; the two company's have until March 15 to respond.

Unlike a lot of smaller companies crying patent infringement and demanding boat-loads of money in damages. Emblaze is taking the more subtle method of offering to license the software to the two companies.

Competitive position? What competitive position? Never heard of them before this.

What products have they released? What products license their technology? How do they know Microsoft and Apple infringe patents? Did they reverse-engineer those systems and say "ah yes look - that's ours"?

This is why it's a very stupid idea to patent software technologies - there's 1001 ways to achieve the same thing. It's not like Microsoft or Apple directly stole proprietary code or tech and used it (like they have done before).